rose petal jam

First challenge!

I just remembered that I have invited my lovely sister and her BF over for dinner on Saturday night. So what you may ask? Well, dinner parties are usually my excuse to buy expensive and exotic ingredients and come over all decadent, very against my new plan! Many an ingredient currently sits, neglected, in our store cupboards, barely used because someone was coming for dinner and well...I couldn't resist trying something new!

So, this morning, as I made soup from a pumpkin from said sister and BF's allotment, I peered into the fridge and cupboards to seek inspiration. here's what I found;

a punnet of fresh blueberries
some parsnips and carrots
potatoes
yorkshire butter
organic cider vinegar
french mustard
gelatine
rose syrup
packet of fresh lemon thyme

and obviously about a squillion other things but the fresh stuff will still be OK by Saturday night as it's in the fridge* and the other things just started to give a shape and form to what I might be planning...

I mulled it over for a while as I finished the soup (pumpkin is very bland so chilli, lemongrass, ginger and sri lankan curry powder were needed!) and as I did the breakfast and soup making dishes. I wanted something seasonal, comforting but with a touch of glamour and that needed a modicum of skill...

And here is what I decided on.

Starter - warm salad of roasted root vegetables with a mustard and cider vinegar dressing
main course - smoked haddock fishcakes with wilted spinach and lemon thyme butter sauce
yoghurt pannacotta with a blueberry compote

ta dah!

I reckon all I will need to buy for a 3 course meal for 4 is; some salad leaves, a bunch of spinach, some smoked haddock and a tub of plain yoghurt. Everything else is happily sat in our fridge or store cupboard, just waiting to be transformed. I am also happy that it's fairly seasonal (apols for the blueberries, i am sure I should be punished for buying them) and much of the produce is British.

I will of course photograph and report back once the meal has been devoured and enjoyed! Can't wait to see you Helen and Mark!

*Keeping fruit and vegetables you would normally store in baskest and racks in the frisge (bananas, pears, carrots, cauliflower etc) will prolong its life and stop it from being spilt/ going to waste.

An experiment in delectable frugality

I have been thinking for a while now that I am not the thriftiest food shopper. I cook on a whim, I change my mind about what I want to cook and buy new ingredients at the last minute, leaving what was to have been cooked with languishing in the fridge. I have three opened bottles of thai fish sauce in my cupboard. Not to mention how many jars of opened jams and chutneys in the fridge.

This wasteful and wanton culinary behaviour seems to be nothing new or exclusive to me and is in fact sweeping the nation as we speak. Apparently over a third of all food bought in the UK is thrown away, unused. I find this really shocking but knowing that I am part of this problem is even more shocking. I wasn't brought up like that! I remember as a child very little got thrown away in our house. OK, we weren't well off so maybe there's part of a reason but when I think about it, it just wasn't something you did, throw away food, let it go off in the fridge, change your mind and leave some perfectly nice salmon to go off because you fancy take out. People made use of leftovers. Sometimes, God forbid, you ate the same meal, or the various assembled ingredients of it, twice in a row.

I used to think the reason I did this and allowed myself to waste food was because I was creative, on the crest of the wave of the latest food ideas, excited by a recipe in a magazine or Sunday supplement. But it isn't creative to waste food. Its wasteful and actually, quite uncreative and a bit lazy!

The world's population is exploding and resources are getting scarcer. Food is a resource which we in the west must stop chucking out (and no, I don't care and it doesn't make it better if you compost it!).

Think about that statistic again. Over 33% of food bought in the UK is WASTED.

So, as of this weekend when food shopping and menu planning start again I am going to commit to the following;

1. to waste as little food as possible
2. to buy seasonal and economical food instead of expensive, imported, silly food
3. to eat only delicious food.

Point 3 is really important. I am not going to do this and suffer! Where's the point in that?!

I have other thoughts about food price rises, the right to eat meat as often as you like and bugger the consequences but I am now tired and so will blog again with more musings shortly..

But don't worry, I am not going to go all radical and militant and NO FUN. In fact, I reckon this could be a truly creative and delicious month ahead!